2024 Public Bid Results

[jdtesluk]

I think planters are best advised to find contractors they trust to pay them a fair market wage, keep them safe and treat them with respect.

If we really could boil it down to one thing. THAT is it. Perfectly stated. You could have perfect ground, fresh after the melt, but without these things in place, it wouldn't matter.

[Scooter]

Here are the results for a contract for Brushing in Terrace

Contract: BR25TII102A
Client: BCTS Terrace
Opened: January 31st, 2024
Season: 2024
Left on the Table: 42.3%

Traditional Territory: Almost a dozen groups

There are four blocks with approximately 56 Ha on this job. Work to be completed by August 15th. This is mostly establishment brushing, but there is one block of about 10 Ha that is conifer release.

01. $ 94,702 - Mihis
02. $134,770 - 4C Forestry
03. $169,988 - Wild Timber Industries
04. $181,451 - Sampson Forestry
05. $248,028 - Little Trees
06. $349,494 - Brinkman

[Scooter]

Here are the results for a contract for Planting in Terrace

Contract: PL25TII100A
Client: BCTS Terrace
# of Trees: 231,083
Season: Spring 2024
Opened: January 26th, 2024
Contractor Rating System: Yes
Option-to-Renew: No
Left on the Table: 6.0%

Traditional Territory: Almost a dozen groups

A slightly challenging contract, but one which Rainforest will be well suited to complete. And a series of close bids.

01. $239,907 - $1.038 per tree - Rainforest
02. $254,202 - $1.100 per tree - Brinkman
03. $263,446 - $1.140 per tree - Little Trees

[Scooter]

Here are the results for a contract for Planting in Chiliwack

Contract: PL25TBS002
Client: BCTS Chilliwack
# of Trees: 685,692
Season: Spring & Fall 2024
Opened: January 17th, 2024
Contractor Rating System: Yes
Option-to-Renew: No
Left on the Table: 2.3%

Traditional Territory: Varies, blocks are spread out, see screen shot below.

This one has blocks around Pemberton, Squamish, Boston Bar, and Hope. Fairly scattered, with approximately 92 blocks. Some challenging access, etc. Some browse protection, some plantskydd, some heli, etc. Basically, a fairly complex contract. I don't include this one when calculating bid price trends because the browse protection skews the pricing so much with respect to other Interior contracts.

472k are in the spring, 214k in the Fall.

The forester included a number of clear photos of the blocks in the Appendices zip file on BC Bid. Very nice work.

01. $816,788 - $1.19 per tree - Fieldstone
02. $835,374 - $1.22 per tree - Rainforest
03. $1,120,878 - $1.63 per tree - Leader
04. $1,361,691 - $1.99 per tree - Zanzibar
05. $2,100,975 - $3.06 per tree - Brinkman

[Scooter]

There are a few other jobs that opened recently, including the following:

PL25TEM630 - BCTS Kamloops - won by Seneca
PL25TGE004A - BCTS Mackenzie - won by Folklore

I haven't had time to dig around for full list of results on those two jobs yet, but I'll get to that eventually.

Also, PL25DPG100 for MOF Prince George closed a week ago. I think that Wright was the only bidder on that one, so I'll find those numbers and post them here eventually too.

[Scooter]

Here are the results for a contract for Planting in Dawson Creek

Contract: PL25TDE003
Client: BCTS Dawson Creek
# of Trees: 1,602,500
Season: Summer 2024
Opened: February 13th, 2024
Contractor Rating System: Yes
Option-to-Renew: No
Left on the Table: 29.8%

Summer trees, summer trees.

01. $1,177,066 - 73.5 cents/tree - Apex
02. $1,528,248 - 95.4 cents/tree - Dynamic
03. $1,598,325 - 99.7 cents/tree - Summit

[Scooter]

Here's a document that I received about a month ago. I didn't post it here at the time, because it was during the period when I was dealing with the ISP struggle.

I've attached the PDF to make it easier to download, but I'll try to cut and paste it here. I've been trying to bite my tongue, but I'll give some commentary in a follow-up post.

Here's the content of the PDF:


Frequently Asked Questions-Loose Pack Seedlings

Q. We have heard there will be less trees per box with loose pack?
A. No, 2023 seedlings per box counts are equal to or exceed historical estimates. In some limited cases, such as summer holdover stock seedlings box numbers may not meet historical box counts, however this is a function of additional root development and would result in less trees per box regardless of packaging method.

Q. We have heard seedling counts can vary per box, how are nurseries ensuring this doesn’t happen.
A. Nurseries are packing boxes the same as when they wrapped bundles, and place ‘bundles’ of seedlings into the box. Boxes and bundles are also weighed regularly during lift to compare volumes of boxes.

Q. Why has only seedling wrap been removed? boxes of trees have plastic liners, and seedling boxes are not recyclable and end up in landfills.
A. Bundle wrap is the first step in removing single use plastics from seedling production. Because loose pack has been used successfully in other jurisdictions, it was easier to start with this. Carton liners serve an important purpose, holding in moisture and preventing desiccation during cold storage, and alternatives are being explored, but health of seedlings during cold storage process is critical. There are also trials underway utilizing recyclable alternatives to wax boxes.

Q. How long do loose pack trees take to thaw in comparison to bundled cartons
A. Information we have received from past trials and through discussions with planting contractors in Ontario indicate that there was no significant change in thaw times. Seedling services will be monitoring this throughout the 2024 planting season.

Q. Will it be ok to change thaw orders last minute with loose pack seedlings
A. This may become problematic, as it will be more difficult to receive frozen seedlings on site and manage thawing whole boxes from frozen.

Q. Will cold storage facilities be able to manage the demands of thawing with loose pack
A. Yes, there is no anticipated differences with thawing loose pack compared to traditional packaging methods.

Q. I have heard it takes longer to bag up with no wrap, what is the experience in areas already implementing loose pack
-Since the planters don't have to unwrap the packaging before placing the trees into the planter bag, the process of filling a bag is much faster.
-People might think it’s slower bagging up because when they’re bundled they sometimes have their one side of the bag still bundled. So yea, you’re back in the land faster, but then unbundling in the land.

Q. Is there any specific way planters' bag up, utilizing loose pack seedlings
A. The best way would be to place them like they are in the cardboard box: a couple handfuls with the roots on one side, and then a couple handfuls with the roots against the other side of the bag.

Q. How do planters manage boxes vs bundles
A. Planters plant whole boxes, or they can split one box in between 2 planters.

Q. How do planters manage blocks with multiple species, with bundles you can manage by the bundle, and share multiple species in a cache.
A. In Ontario, tree planters typically plant around 3000 trees daily. With boxes containing 360 trees each, this amounts to just over 8 boxes. Planters can allocate 1-2 boxes per species per planter, ensuring convenient access to all species during their workday.

Q. How do companies deal with overcharge
-A veteran camp boss from Ontario said they never came across a planter claiming the box had more trees. Although unlikely, if there’s an issue, notify the forester so he can bring the issue to the grow nursery.
-On the lift line at the nursery, trees are counted and moved in the box, in bundles, without being wrapped. It’s the same procedure as wrapping, but without plastic.
-As for planters claiming more trees than are in a box, I don’t know man. I would just hope that what is supposed to be in the box is in the box. Nobody counts tree for tree, so I don’t know how anyone would know there are more or less unless the bag up takes way more time or less time than expected.

Q. What should we do if loose pack loads are delivered partially frozen
A. The boxes need to be moved outdoors from the refrigerated trailer, away from direct sunlight, for thawing. Thawed trees in a partially frozen box can still be planted. It's important to inform the cold storage facility to ensure the trees are thawed completely prior to delivery.

Q. It appears that seedlings will move around the box and be a jumbled mess by the time they reach planting site
A. From observations made at nurseries, and in other jurisdictions that utilize loose pack, seedlings remain stable and interlock well inside the box.

Q. How will we know what boxes are loose-packed.
A. For 2024, spruce, pine and cedar species will be loose packed. Carton labels will clearly indicate if it is a loose pack. We are carrying out some small trials with other species such as Douglas Fir, but labels will indicate packing type.

Q. What should we do if Botrytis is discovered in boxes
A. The same as you would with bundled trees.
- Infected seedlings should be planted as soon as possible to control the severity and spread of the disease. Once seedlings are planted, the fungus will be killed once exposed to sunlight and increased air circulation.
- It may sometimes be advisable to:
- Stand all seedlings up vertically in the box to improve air flow around the seedlings shoots and to help reduce humidity.
- Open up the box lids / liners to expose seedlings further to air drying. Caution should be taken to ensure seedling roots are not allowed to dry out and cause potential desiccation problems. The objective is to have dry foliage and moist plugs. Once this is achieved, boxes may be closed again to prevent further drying of plugs. Regular stock monitoring by trained personnel is recommended.
- Seedlings with severe Botrytis infections should be checked to determine if they are alive. If foliage of seedlings is severely damaged and / or defoliated, and if the vascular tissue (cambium) is rotted, the infected seedlings should be culled.

[Scooter]

In the content of the above, here are a few of my own thoughts, for some of the specific sections above. My comments in Red.



Q. We have heard seedling counts can vary per box, how are nurseries ensuring this doesn’t happen.
A. Nurseries are packing boxes the same as when they wrapped bundles, and place ‘bundles’ of seedlings into the box. Boxes and bundles are also weighed regularly during lift to compare volumes of boxes.
Nurseries sometimes can't get the correct number of bundles in the box. My camp has had problems with this twice in the past two years on a minor basis, but on a fairly significant basis from one specific nursery a couple years before that. Hundreds of extra bundles.


Q. Why has only seedling wrap been removed? boxes of trees have plastic liners, and seedling boxes are not recyclable and end up in landfills.
A. Bundle wrap is the first step in removing single use plastics from seedling production. Because loose pack has been used successfully in other jurisdictions, it was easier to start with this. Carton liners serve an important purpose, holding in moisture and preventing desiccation during cold storage, and alternatives are being explored, but health of seedlings during cold storage process is critical. There are also trials underway utilizing recyclable alternatives to wax boxes.
This makes sense.


Q. I have heard it takes longer to bag up with no wrap, what is the experience in areas already implementing loose pack
-Since the planters don't have to unwrap the packaging before placing the trees into the planter bag, the process of filling a bag is much faster.
-People might think it’s slower bagging up because when they’re bundled they sometimes have their one side of the bag still bundled. So yea, you’re back in the land faster, but then unbundling in the land.
This is indirectly quite incorrect in my experience. I've planted a lot of unwrapped trees on the east coast over the past several years. The processes of "unwrapping" west coast bundles takes a few seconds per bundle, let's say 18 bundles per box, so probably less than a minute of time per bag-up. But the seedlings are all oriented in one direction and can be quickly placed into planting bags so they're oriented consistently, with no additional effort. On the east coast, we save 45-60 seconds per bag-up since we're not removing plastic, but we're spending 3-4 minutes trying to orient the jumbled seedlings into our bags. OR alternatively, the seedlings just get dumped into our bags in whatever direction they end up in, but we waste 3-4 minutes while planting the bag-up, because we're having to fiddle with the orientation as we're grabbing seedlings out of our bags. Either way, jumbled seedlings cause a notable slow-down of a few minutes each bag-up, which is not fully offset by the time saved in removing plastic. Granted, two minutes per bag-up doesn't seem like a lot. But on more than a million boxes of trees planted in BC, two million minutes = 33,000 labour hours. If we have 4500 planters province-wide, that's an average of 7.4 wasted hours per person. So basically, on a pure theoretical sense, this slows the entire season down by about a day.


Q. How do planters manage blocks with multiple species, with bundles you can manage by the bundle, and share multiple species in a cache.
A. In Ontario, tree planters typically plant around 3000 trees daily. With boxes containing 360 trees each, this amounts to just over 8 boxes. Planters can allocate 1-2 boxes per species per planter, ensuring convenient access to all species during their workday.
I'm sorry, I didn't realize that we're all working in Ontario now. I guess we can slut them in this year.


Q. How do companies deal with overcharge
-A veteran camp boss from Ontario said they never came across a planter claiming the box had more trees. Although unlikely, if there’s an issue, notify the forester so he can bring the issue to the grow nursery.
Foresters don't give a shit about this. They're getting free trees. We've had this problem in the past and it was never dealt with satisfactorily.

-As for planters claiming more trees than are in a box, I don’t know man. I would just hope that what is supposed to be in the box is in the box. Nobody counts tree for tree, so I don’t know how anyone would know there are more or less unless the bag up takes way more time or less time than expected.
Yes, some planters count every tree as they plant. I'm one of them. Those of us that do count, do it for many different reasons. Anything as simple as always knowing what percentage of your bag-up has been planted (which can help to know when to turn back to your cache while doing L's at the back of a piece) to helping estimate coverage of an area, to being a characteristic of people with OCD or ASD.


Q. What should we do if Botrytis is discovered in boxes
A. The same as you would with bundled trees.
- Infected seedlings should be planted as soon as possible to control the severity and spread of the disease. Once seedlings are planted, the fungus will be killed once exposed to sunlight and increased air circulation.
- It may sometimes be advisable to:
- Stand all seedlings up vertically in the box to improve air flow around the seedlings shoots and to help reduce humidity.
This sounds fun. Admittedly, asking us to stand up individual seedlings in a box wouldn't be as challenging as if we asked the forester to leave all the pens standing upright on their office desk.

[Scooter]

Here are the results for a contract for Planting in Fort St John

Contract: PL25TDF003
Client: BCTS Fort St John
# of Trees: 1,773,349
Season: Summer 2024
Opened: February 20th, 2024
Contractor Rating System: Yes
Option-to-Renew: No
Left on the Table: 2.0%

I'm not sure if the Contractor Rating System adjustments have been applied to these bids yet. If not, this could upset the order of award.

This contract is summer trees. Pretty remote stuff, and lots of heli too. The main risk here is that these trees are being planted in July, so if there's a significant amount of fire activity, it may be difficult to secure helicopters.

These blocks are pretty spread out. You can see the graphic that I attached below. The red blocks are on this contract. The blue circle indicates approximately where all of the blocks on the two spring BCTS Fort St John contracts (planting in May) are clustered.

Other than those challenges, this seems like a pretty fair price. Very tight spread between the two bidders.

01. $2,102,453 - $1.186 per tree - Summit
02. $2,144,626 - $1.209 per tree - Apex

[Scooter]

Here are the results for a contract for Planting in Dawson Creek

Contract: PL25TDE002A
Client: BCTS Dawson Creek
# of Trees: 1,809,800
Season: Summer 2024
Opened: February 21st, 2024
Contractor Rating System: Yes
Option to Renew: No
Left on the Table: 12.3%

Summer trees, slightly over a third are heli, lots of ATV.

01. $1,406,510 - 77.7 cents/tree - Dynamic
02. $1,578,961 - 87.2 cents/tree - Summit
03. $1,935,423 - $1.069 per tree - Apex

[MikeBH]

Thanks for all your work once again with all the posting Scooter. Did something change with how views were counted? Or was there just a tonne more traffic this year?

I love the foresters replies to the questions about loose seedlings. Basically just, no there won't be any problems, nothing to see here. I still think the higher prices this season should mostly take care of the problems, except for the contracts where there are frequently 3 or more species. Then things will get tricky.

Oh, and the Apex bid on summer trees. Ouch! $350k left on the table. That's gotta hurt.

[Scooter]

Did something change with how views were counted? Or was there just a tonne more traffic this year?

Slight uptick in traffic this year. The main Replant website traffic is up. The forums here in general are about the same as last year, but public bid results are slightly up.

However, the apparent number of hits (340k) is not correct. After the board was rebuilt at the beginning of February, I forgot to turn off counting hits from bots. The ahref bot was visiting the board and racked up tons of views. The only thing that I don't understand is why it was hitting this section the top topic in the Q&A, but nothing in any of the other sections.

Anyway, I've blocked all of the bots, which will stop the hit counters from increasing in this (and any other) section.

[Scooter]

Here are the results for a job for Planting in 100 Mile House

Contract: PL25TEM637
Client: BCTS 100 Mile House
# of Trees: 1,818,763
Season: Spring 2024
Opened: February 28th, 2024
Contractor Rating System: Yes
Option to Renew: Yes, 3 years
Left on the Table: 26.5%

This project includes 405,548 ferts. The blocks are mostly up in the Green Lake area, although there are a handful of blocks totalling around 191k that need to be accessed from a different direction on the Chasm FSR.

01. $1,064,371 - 58.5 cents/tree - Sitka
02. $1,346,471 - 74.0 cents/tree - Folklore
03. $1,488,848 - 81.9 cents/tree - Apex
04. $1,773,277 - 97.5 cents/tree - Torrent

[MikeBH]

Wow, Sitka in 100 Mile House? Times they are a changing.

Almost $300k left on the table. That's too bad. Probably not really a bad price, just a bit of a failure to read the room.

[Scooter]

Here are the results for a contract for Planting in Chilliwack

Contract: PL25LMN001
Client: MOF Chilliwack
# of Trees: 182,571
Season: Spring 2024
Opened: March 27th, 2024
Contractor Rating System: N/A
Option-to-Renew: No
Left on the Table: 4.2%

01. $135,072 - 74.0 cents/tree - Zanzibar
02. $140,795 - 77.1 cents/tree - Fieldstone

[Scooter]

Here are the results for a contract for Planting in 100 Mile House

Contract: PL25TEM632
Client: BCTS 100 Mile
# of Trees: 1,533,449
Opened: February 29th, 2024
Season: Spring 2024
Option-to-Renew: Yes, 3 years
Contractor Rating System: Yes
Left on the Table: 49.5%

Left a bit on the table, $548,842.

This contract includes 219,470 teabags.

01. $1,108,237 - 72.3 cents/tree - Zanzibar
02. $1,657,079 - $1.08 per tree - Apex